High Quality Web Series Continue with Hulu’s ‘The Booth at the End’ Season 2 Premiere

Last year, we discussed The Booth at the End, a show that went through some unusual distribution channels and then ended up premiering in the US on Hulu. The show, created by Christopher Kubasik and starring character actor Xander Berkeley, illustrated that there was room for different kinds of entertainment that perhaps couldn’t be well-told in a movie theater or on TV. The Booth at the End is an unusual sci-fi entertainment, where all the action takes place off-screen, the mysteries are compelling, and it’s entirely driven by dialogue, acting, and small moments.

The Booth at the End Season 2 Premiere

After its first season, it was in doubt that The Booth at the End would get a 2nd. That’s the unsteady ground that web series, no matter how successful, seem to tread all the time. Admittedly, the show could be marked “unusual” or “hard to market,” because it takes place entirely within a diner, and the dialogue is the action.

It’s like a “Twilight Zone” or “Outer Limits,” but the consequences for the characters can only be imagined, or discussed in retrospect. Each character comes to see The Man (Berkeley) in a booth at the end of a diner. They ask for things that seem impossible. In turn, The Man looks at a mysterious book, and gives them a seemingly entirely unrelated task. Sometimes, the task is good. Many times, the task takes normal people out of their comfort zone and requires illegal or immoral actions.

Here’s the Season 2 premiere:

The legitimacy of web series as a medium and it’s ability to sustain ads will rely on quality. The past couple of years have been good, but this year they’re turning into full-fledged events. While The Booth at the End isn’t going to get the kind of press Tom Hanks’ Electric City and the upcoming, potentially game-changing, Halo series, it should be cited as one of the shows that helped web series grow up from the perceived amateurish medium to the slick, professional look that we’re seeing in most cases now. It has the ability to tell a compelling story and make you want to come back the following week, which is the entire point.